To:ARTHUR SCHMID[1]

Written:Written in German on December 1, 1918Published:First published in 1931 inLenin Miscellany XVII.

      Sent to Winterthur (Switzerland).

      Printed from a typewritten copy.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages256-258.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

DearComrade,

Willyou allow me to suggest an amicable agreement?

Imust admit that yesterday I paid insufficient attention to one very
important point in your
arguments.[2]Namely, the idea that the peculiarity of Switzerland
lies, among other things, in her greater degree of democracy (the
referendum), and that this peculiarity should be made use ofalsofor propaganda purposes. This idea is very important and, in my opinion,
completely correct.

Couldwe not apply this idea in such a way that our differences (which
are probably very insignificant) should disappear? For example:

Ifwe put the question for the referendumonlyin this
way—for complete elimination or against?—we shall get a mixture of
pacifist (bourgeois-pacifist, etc.) and socialist votes for it, i.e., we
shall get not a clarification of a socialist consciousness but a darkening
of it, not the application of the idea and the policy ofclass
struggleto this particular question (namely, the question of
militarism) but the renunciation of the point of view of the class struggle
on the question of militarism.

Butif we put the question for the referendum in this way—for the
expropriation of large capitalist enterprises in industry and agriculture,as the only wayof completely eliminating militarism, or against
expropriation?

Ifwe put it like that, we shall be saying in our practical policy the
same thing that we all recognise theoretically, namely, that the complete
elimination of militarism is thinkable and realisable only in connection
with the elimination of capitalism.

Consequentlythere should be approximately the following formulation:
(1) we demand theimmediateexpropriation of large enterprises,
perhaps in the form of a direct Federal property and income tax, with such
high, revolutionarily-high, rates for large properties that the capitalists
will, in fact, be expropriated.

(2)Wedeclare that such a socialist transformation of Switzerland is
economically possible already today, directly, and, in consequence of the
unbearably high cost of living, is urgently necessary as well, and that for
the political effecting of such a transformation Switzerland needs not a
bourgeois but a proletarian government, which would rely not on the
bourgeoisie but on the broad masses of hired workers and small people, and
that the revolutionary mass struggle which we see beginning, for example,
in the mass strikes and street demonstrations in Zurich, and which is
recognised by the Aarau
decision,^^264 pursuesexactlythat purpose—to put arealend in that way to the intolerable position of the masses.

(3)Wedeclare that such a transformation of Switzerlandwill quite
inevitably arouseimitation and the most resolute enthusiastic support
on the part of the working class and the mass of the exploited inallcivilised countries, and thatonlyin connection with
such a transformation willthe complete elimination of militarismfor which we strive, and for which at present particularly wide masses in
Europe are instinctively thirsting, become not an empty phrase, not an
amiable wish, but a genuine, practically achievable and politically
self-explanatory measure.

Whatdo you think of this?

Doyou not consider that, if the question is put in this way (both in
practical agitation and in parliamentary speeches and proposals for a
legislative initiative and for a referendum), we shall avoidthedanger that bourgeois and “socialist” pacifists will falsely understand
and misinterpretour anti-militarist slogan in the sense that we suppose it possible to
completely abolish militarism inbourgeois Switzerland, in herimperialistenvironment,withouta socialist revolution
(which, of course, is nonsense that we all unanimously repudiate).

WithParty greetings,N. Lenin

Wl.Uljanow.Spiegelgasse 14II(bei Kammerer). Zürich I.

[1]Schmid,Arthur(b. 1889)—Swiss bourgeois economist.

[2]Thearguments Schmid advanced in his speech of November 30, 1916, at a
meeting of Swiss Social-Democrats who supported the Zimmerwald Left. The
meeting discussed the question of preparing a draft resolution for the
forthcoming Extraordinary Congress of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party on
the socialists’ attitude to militarism and the war.